Software that supports cooperative work, often called groupware, generally employs work surfaces that function according to the “What you see is what I see” (“WYSIWIS”) paradigm. This means that whenever a group of users is using such software, each has the same view. Anything written by one of the users is immediately seen by everyone else. Although the WYSIWIS paradigm has been the central idea behind most shared work surface groupware, deviations from a strict interpretation of some aspects of this paradigm have sometimes been considered.
For example, users may be distracted by a strict adherence to the WYSIWIS “simultaneity constraint.” Consider a group member who is drawing a rectangle on the shared work surface. The other group members may find it distracting to watch the fine grain updates that transpire as the rectangle is sized and placed. Therefore, it may be more appropriate for the system to delay the process of updating the other displays until the size and placement of the rectangle have been finalized, even though this implies the users will not always have identical views of the shared work surface.
Another example of an advantageous relaxing of strict adherence to the WYSIWIS paradigm is permitting the shared work surface to exceed the size of what can be displayed at one time, and permitting individual users to select which portion is displayed at their workstation.
In many situations the members of a group employing a groupware system do not all have a common role. For example, one valuable use of groupware is as a teaching aid in a classroom. In this situation, a teacher or professor has the primary responsibility for selecting the subject matter and directing the discussion. It is therefore advantageous for this person to have additional means of reviewing and selecting the contributions from the other group members for the purpose of providing those that are likely to be most helpful to the discourse.
What is needed, therefore, is a system for sharing knowledge that uses a relaxed version of the WYSIWIS paradigm to further facilitate the efficient transfer of useful information, while filtering out information that is not useful or distracting. The present invention is directed towards meeting this need.